When I first began a serious study of haiku poetry under the
tutelage of Professor Harold G. Henderson in 1970, one prerequisite was an
understanding and appreciation of its related forms, i.e. the renga, haibun,
tanka and senryu.
Of all these forms, it was the senryu which had most captured my interest.
In 1972, the following poem of mine was published in the Haiku Society
of America
Minutes:

the fat
lady
bends over the tomatoes
a full moon

Upon reading
this poem, Henderson pointed out that this poem was, in fact,
a senryu since
its thrust and emphasis
was the woman’s behind
in addition to the juxtaposition of the lady’s roundness and the
full moon.

As I later studied the senryu genre, I learned that it was “a product
of the merchant/townsmen culture of the 18th century, which celebrated
the self-absorption
disallowed elsewhere in Japanese society. It also provided new material
for the poets to explore that the Haiku (with its emphasis on Nature
rather than Man)
excluded.” [1]This
came shortly after the quality of the Haiku and haikai deteriorated shortly
after Basho.

He shuts
his eyes
To look for the wisdom
Inside his own body
—Anon.
Senryu (Early 18th century) [3]

Last
night,
A lover’s quarrel,
This morning, a real one.
—Anon.
Senryu [4]

Today much
of the experimentation going on among contemporary haiku poets
has displayed
a need that
goes beyond the limitations of
haiku poetry. “Though an attempt at the revival of Old Senryu
was made in the latter part of the 19th century, senryu never quite
made it up the ladder as
a respectable genre of poetry” [5] -- until recently. Unfortunately,
it has gone unrecognized by the very poets who write them under the
banner of
haiku. I feel this is a great injustice to both the senryu genre and
the haiku genre. Today, when we hear such terms as “political
haiku,” “spiritual
haiku,” “psychological haiku” and “metaphysical
haiku,” we
need only to return to R.H. Blyth’s books on the subject of Senryu
to find prime examples of what is being called haiku today. For example:

“Make a profit
On the next sale.” she says,
Haggling over the price.
—Anon. Senryu (Early 18th century) [7]

As for the spiritual,
any good haiku is indeed spiritual! And when we consider the metaphysical,
one
only needs
to read the definition
of the word to understand its irrelevance to haiku as it is “abstract” (as
opposed to concrete) and it contains “intellectual imagery” (as
opposed to direct observation).

This reminds me
of a joke Anita Virgil told me about a man who goes into the tailor’s shop
to get his new suit altered. The tailor begins with the sleeves.
The man watches in the mirror and notices
that one sleeve is shorter than the other. When he tells the
tailor about it, the tailor says: “Just shift your shoulder
up a bit…There! You
see? It fits perfectly now.” But in the process, the man’s
jacket has hiked up at the back and is uneven “No problem,” says the tailor “Just bend your knee a bit and
it will straighten out the hemline.” The man does as
he is told and sure enough…the hemline seems to even
out. The alterations continue. Finally, with his new suit fixed,
the man goes out into the street wearing it. As he hobbles
down the sidewalk with the gait of a cripple, two women see
him. One says : “Oh,
look at that poor, poor man!” The other woman eyes him
a moment and responds: “Yes,
but doesn’t his suit fit perfectly!”

Today,
poets are displaying the innovative and wonderful potential
of the senryu genre: Alexis Rotella’s